In his recent book "The Chief Culprit" the bestselling author Viktor Suvorov probes newly released Soviet documents and reevaluates existing material to analyze Stalin's strategic design to conquer Europe and the reasons behind his controversial support for Nazi Germany.

He argues that Stalin was caught just days before launching his own assault into Central Europe. Thus the Red Army's offensive posture rendered it uniquely vulnerable to German attack.

A former Soviet army intelligence officer (true name Vladimir Rezun), the author explains that Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Vladimir Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be needed to achieve it. Stalin saw Nazi Germany as the power that would fight and weaken capitalist countries so that Soviet armies could then sweep across Europe. Suvorov reveals how Stalin conspired with German leaders to bypass the Versailles Treaty, which forbade German rearmament, and secretly trained German engineers and officers and provided bases and factories for war. He also calls attention to the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that allowed Hitler to proceed with his plans to invade Poland, fomenting war in Europe.

Suvorov debunks the theory that Stalin was duped by Hitler and that the Soviet Union was a victim of Nazi aggression. Instead, he makes the case that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. Suvorov maintains that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Union's preparations for a major war against Germany. This detection, he argues, led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the launch of an invasion of the USSR. Stalin emerges from the pages of this book as a genius consumed by the vision of a worldwide Communist revolution at any cost--a leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. In contradicting traditional theories about Soviet planning, the book is certain to provoke debate among historians throughout the world.

About the Author

VIKTOR SUVOROV is the author of eighteen books that have been translated into more than twenty languages, including "Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy" and "Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?" A Soviet army officer who served in military intelligence, he defected in 1978 to the United Kingdom, where he worked as an intelligence analyst and lecturer. He lives in England.